Power in the Blood

A previous professor returned to campus to lecture on the blend of historical facts and creative imagination while writing her family's oral history.

Dr. Linda Tate's "Power in the Blood" tells the story of Tate's Appalachian and Cherokee family. "It's a work of creative non-fiction that blends historical research with imaginative recreation," Tate said. The piece of creative non-fiction took her fourteen years to complete. In the family narrative, Tate captures the poverty, discrimination and family violence that marked her heritage. The book is a collection of three women sharing their stories, capturing four voices: Tate's great, great grandmother, Louisiana's voice in 1902, her grandmother, Fanny in 1963, and Tate, herself, as a child and an adult. The book is set primarily in the "land between the lakes" in the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Tate mostly lectured about the story of Fanny, a woman who left her husband and children to join a carnival. She discussed two issues that she is asked the most about: how she created the voice of Fanny and what sections of the book was factual truth versus sections that were fleshed out with the imagination.

Completely fabricating the voices of Louisiana and Fanny, Tate said each voice required careful shaping and crafting, even her own voice as a character. When writing through the character's voice, Tate would completely immerse herself for months at a time solely on one character. "I would live, eat, breathe Fanny. I put myself in her head all the time ... and let her speak to me through my pen," said Tate.

One of the challenges Tate faced was making a distinction between Fanny's and Louisiana's voice. Both characters have a rural Kentucky and Tennessee background, but Fanny's voice has a more modern dialect since her story is being shared in 1963 when she lived in the city. In addition, Fanny is sassy and feisty, so her speech reflected her personality. Tate was also careful to incorporate carnival lingo into Fanny's language. One of her chapters begins with Fanny saying, "The jump that day was short." A "jump" was the distance from town to town that carnivals traveled during a day. In order to pick up the lingo of carnival workers, Tate studied letters and diaries found in museums.

She performed two types of research for the making of this book: facts through libraries and collecting oral history through interviews. The Circus World Museum provided archives of photographs, flyers, diaries, amps and historical books. She also turned to the courts for marriage records and census records. For oral histories, Tate went to her family members. Her father was reluctant to speak with her on the matter, but her Uncle Henry and mother provided insight. Through her family, Tate learned that her grandmother was a carnival geek and motor drone, a practice where someone road a bike on the "Wall of Death". While Fanny did run away with the man, leaving her family behind, Tate completely fabricated Frank in the book. Tate also has Fanny joining the Princess Algua Carnival, a true carnival in that region during the time period, but Tate is unsure if Fanny was actually apart of that particular one.

"I took a rough sketch or outline of a story that has been brought down through my family and imagined how it would be brought to life in a historically and culturally accurate sense," said Tate.

Tate said one of her greatest contributions to her research experience was relocating to the place where Fanny was born. Golden Pond, Kentucky was a town located in the "land between the rivers." However, the Tennessee Valley Authority damned the rivers and made the land a national recreation area known as "the land between the lakes." So all of the people along with their homes were cleared out from the area, but Tate was able to find a farm house located seven miles outside of Golden Pond. She spent two summers immersing herself in the climate, weather and landscape of the region. The opportunity also allowed her to meet and interview distant relatives.

"Power in the Blood" was published last year by Ohio State University and is currently available on Amazon.com. After teaching 15 years at Shepherd, Tate moved to Colorado to join the faculty writing program at the University of Denver four years ago. While at Shepherd, she was awarded the 2003 West Virginia professor of the year. She is currently an independent scholar and freelance writer.